Never truly understood what either El Niño or La Niña are and everytime I look it up I get nothing that makes sense. Please explain
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Basically, in the middle of the South Pacific, there’s this really big river in the ocean. It comes up the west coast of South America, bringing cold water up the coast, then moves across the Pacific ocean towards Australia; warming up as it goes. This current generally keeps the west coast of South America cold, and then warms up Australia. This is “normal” weather.
However, there’s enough force behind the water that “normal” is actually able to beat gravity – but not forever. When there’s enough water in the west side of the Pacific (near Australia), the flow stops or even reverses. This causes “El Nino” – named that because it normally shows up around Christmas – which results in warmer weather in the East Pacific (west coast of America), and colder weather in the East Pacific (Australia north to China). However, this warmer weather in the Americas also pushes across Central America to the Caribbean, pushing storms eastward and generally drying out that area.
Once things stabilize a little, the ocean river starts up – and because it’s not pushing against as much water, it ends up going a little faster. This means more water comes up the South American coast – cold water. Cooler weather in the East Pacific pulls rain in along the Caribbean coast. Meanwhile, on the other side of things, the first backwash of water results in more rain on the Australia/Asia side of things.
[The National Ocean Service](https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/ninonina.html) has a page dedicated to El Niño and La Niña which gives a brief explanation.
But in general, El Niño and La Niña are climate patterns in the Pacific Ocean that can impact the weather world wide. Currently we are at the end of an El Niño period, and experts believe we will enter a La Niña period during the summer. Each cycle usually last around a year, but they can last several years as well.
During El Niño, it is generally warmer and dryer in the northern parts of the US and Canada, but wetter in the southern parts of the US with increased flooding.
During La Niña, it’s essentially the other way around with the climate being wetter and colder in the north, and warmer and dryer in the south. During La Niña, hurricanes are usually worse as well.
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